So that’s how they’re thanking us, many citizens will have thought when they heard during the Christmas holidays that seven young refugees from Syria and Libya allegedly tried to set fire to a homeless person in a Berlin subway station. If passers-by hadn’t intervened, the victim could have died. Almost all the men were known to the police for acts of criminal assault. If this is in fact what happened, then it is a crime that causes people to be doubly angry, because along with violating the prohibition against murder, it disregards another fundamental expectation: Anyone coming to Germany as a refugee seeking protection should value this security instead of doing the exact opposite and threatening other people. Otherwise citizens in host countries could begin to ask themselves why they should generously welcome people who are making their lives less secure.

Let’s examine this very question after Christmas holidays that were marred by acts of violence inflicted by foreigners.

Why are we putting up with all these people?

Why is Europe, especially Germany, permitting hundreds of thousands of persons who – compared with local standards – often come from backward, paternalistic, sometimes unenlightened countries to enter our high-end societies? Why are we burdening ourselves with persons who have been coarsened or traumatized and are threatened not only with culture shock, but also with profound disappointments, rejecting responses and religious radicalization?

The "suitcase bombers" of Cologne in 2006: young Lebanese seeking to pay back blasphemous Europeans for a Danish cartoonist’s insulting of the Prophet. The bloodbath in the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo: carried out by the sons of Algerian immigrants. The terrorist attacks in Madrid, London, Paris, Brussels, Nice, the alleged bomb-builder from Leipzig, the suspect at Berlin’s Christmas market: Many of the horrible crimes of past years were committed by Muslims. The familiar truth that not all Muslims are terrorists but most of today’s terrorists are Muslims means statistically that the risk of terror in Europe rises the more Muslims live here.

What moral obligation do the citizens of a country have to help citizens of other countries if they simultaneously import dangers that perhaps only fully develop in the second or third generation from the original immigrants? This was the argument France used during the 2015 refugee crisis to refuse to share the burden with Germany: Dear neighbor, we already have enough problems with the Arabs who have arrived in the last 30 years. Hungary and Poland said simply: No Muslims, no terrorism problem.One can give an easy answer regarding the obligation to grant asylum and cite constitutional and international law. Article 16a of the Basic Law states clearly: "Persons who are politically persecuted have the right to asylum." What persecution actually means and how refugees must be treated is specified by the Geneva Refugee Convention. Since 2002, persecution because of gender or sexual orientation has generally been interpreted to also justify the right to asylum. What is more, the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits deporting unsuccessful asylum seekers to countries where they could face torture or other grievous violations of human rights.

Schlagwörter

Kommentare

The current system is unfair because only those who can afford the dangerous journey reach Europe. The poorest and weakest don't even make it. What we need is an uncomplicated, legal way of letting refugees in. Unfortunately, what the British government is doing (20 000 refugees until 2020) is quite ridiculous. It would be perfectly possible for Europe to take in up to million refugees per year and care for them.
But since European governments and many European citizens are not willing to do that, refugees don't have another chance than traveling the way they are traveling now and sending one an from their family who will apply for family reunion once his asylum request has been accepted.

the central problem now should not be how to flood EU/germany with even more millions refugees - but to get rid of the hundreds of thousands denied asylum right in germany.
neither in morocco nor in tunisia any criteria of above cited persecutions could have been applied, less in the case of immigrants from the balcans or afghanistan...
real refugees in civil war stricken syria or iraq have to stay in camps under inhumane conditions - with the money necessary for one asylum seeker in germany 20 persons could be maintained in libanon or jordania.
merkels putsch against all EU-laws and agreements (both schengen and dublin) may seem a humane act in case of emergency - de facto it was absolutely inhumane and unfair: only the strong and with enough money to afford the treck cpuld enter (the easier illegally), the weak and poor never had a chance to escape (from syria, e.g.) and those with a valid passport were rejected to apply at the embassies of their home country!
little wonder that germany got a surprising high rate of petty criminals amongst the million of refugees - and salafist terrorists, too (a 5-9 000 'dangerous' 'gefährder' accordung to german police).